


Cleaning up from the Storm

by MDJensen



Series: Me and Captain America [2]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Jerry hugs are the best, one-sided Jerry/Steve, post 8x10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 09:56:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16427189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MDJensen/pseuds/MDJensen
Summary: Steve's feeling better, but that doesn't mean he doesn't need Jerry anymore. Post 8x10.





	Cleaning up from the Storm

As predicted, Steve comes by less and less after he tells Danny—and yes, okay, Jerry’s disappointed, even though that’s not appropriate. Because it’s a good thing, really. It means he’s either feeling better, or feeling more able to lean on his best friend—or both—and that’s good. It’s good.

And so Jerry tries his best to _feel_ good about it, especially since it seems he and Steve are better friends in general now. Maybe they don’t even need the couch crashing thing, anymore.

Not to say he doesn’t miss it horribly, as it decreases. Summer ends. And by October Steve isn’t coming by at all anymore, at least not for that reason (though Jerry leaves the blanket on the couch, just in case.)

And _then_ : December.

Bioweapons and quarantine and Danny, shot in the fucking chest.

A week happens in the blink of an eye. Flashes by in snatches of terror and adrenaline, pleading with Swiss banks and scouring weather reports and forcing himself to believe that if he and Lou and Adam can just work hard enough, they can save their friends. Their team.

They do. Jerry picks Danny’s kids up from school and tells them that listen, their dad’s been hurt, but he’s going to be okay.

There’s a lull, like the eye of a hurricane.

Then the storm roars back full force, nothing even for him to do about it; and then Jerry is holding Charlie in his lap as he cries in confusion about why Danno was supposed to come home today, but now he’s not again.

Danny survives.

The storm’s over but there’s trees and power-lines down everywhere, metaphorically of course, and Jerry finds himself crashing at Danny’s house being an uncle because that’s what’s needed of him now.

It’s nice, being needed.

Of course, in this context, being needed amounts to a lot of grilled cheese and bedtime stories (and a mud rocket). Very different from being needed by Steve.

It’s probably wrong, how much he misses that other kind of being needed.

Probably wrong how wild his heart goes when, four or five days after Steve gets out of the hospital and Danny doesn’t, Jerry hears familiar footsteps come down the hallway, and stop just outside.

The door pushes open. Jerry’s kept it cracked for ages now, for this exact purpose, but the noise of it surprises him now. It’s been nearly two months since Steve has sought escape here.

But here he is, looking just as miserable as he did last spring; and Jerry’s heart breaks because clearly this isn’t a relapse so much as Steve working himself up to the point of illness. Danny’s going to be fine. Jerry knows Steve knows that; but he also knows it’s still an emotional thing to have gone through.

“Hey,” Jerry calls, quietly.

“Hey,” Steve breathes. He gestures vaguely at the couch; then, when Jerry nods, takes off his shoes and tucks up in one corner.

“Lifesaver?” Jerry asks. He’s kept a stash of mint ones in his desk since they figured out how much the candies helped Steve’s nausea. But Steve shakes his head.

“Mm. Trashcan?” Because maybe it’s bad enough today that he’s not fighting the inevitable? Jerry holds the receptacle up like a game show host displaying the grand prize, and Steve smiles at him indulgently. Then he shakes his head again.

Jerry shuts up then, suspecting that maybe what he really needs is quiet; he goes back to his computer, and doesn’t turn around for a few solid minutes.

When he does, out of curiosity, Steve’s pulled the blanket into his lap. He’s sitting with it over only one thigh—which, let’s be real, has to be a comfort thing since it can’t be a warmth thing. His right hand covers his face.

And— _oh_. Maybe he’s not here because he’s upset and therefore made himself sick. Maybe he’s here because he’s just—upset. Full stop?

Holy _crap_.

“C’n I get you anything, commander?” Jerry asks, quietly.

“No. Sorry, I just needed—”

“Please don’t be sorry about that.” He hadn’t even let him finish the sentence, but honestly, he didn’t need to.

Behind his fingers, Steve smiles. Then he sniffles and lowers his hand, swiping discretely at his nose on the way down. They sit for a while in a silence that’s heavy, but not uncomfortable.

“How’re the kids doing?” Steve asks, eventually.

“Charlie’s okay. Still a little confused, but he’s got a good impression of hospitals. For obvious reasons. So he’s not worried.”

His fingers pinch idly at a fold in the blanket. “What about Gracie?”

“She’s still pretty shaken up. But she’ll be okay.”

“How shaken up?”

“Not sleeping too well. Stayed home from school day before yesterday. It’s good Eric’s been stayin’ with us; she won’t really talk to me about it, but she’ll talk to him.”

“And how’s he?”

“Pretty much the same. He and Gracie, last night, they went to bed crazy early, like eight thirty. Then this morning I woke up and found ‘em both conked out in the living room with the TV on. Guess they couldn’t sleep.” He thinks that sets the scene well enough without mentioning the piles of tissues on the floor and the two empty beer bottles that _better_ have both been Eric’s.

Steve sniffles again. Jerry’s insides squirm with affection and protectiveness and empathetic gloom, but he tamps it all down and makes himself focus.

“They really are okay, commander,” he says, calmly. “Please don’t worry.”

Steve draws a few slow breaths, while he seems to process things. At last he glances up. “I’m really glad you’re with ‘em, Jerry.”

 _I should’ve been_ , he doesn’t say. But he doesn’t need to.

“There’s nothing wrong with takin’ some time to process,” Jerry says, as Steve hangs his head a little.

“It’s not even that. I don’t—need space. Don’t even want it. I just don’t want to—to scare them.”

“How would you scare them?”

“Because I’m—I’m shaken, too. Pretty badly, man. Kids—they know that. I feel like it’ll make it worse. Make them think it’s worse than it is.”

And the fact that he looks ready to cry at the thought of scaring Danny’s kids makes Jerry love him even more than he already did.

“Steve.”

Steve moves his head, but doesn’t quite meet Jerry’s eyes.

“Charlie and Grace love you, man. Like, to the moon and back kind of a thing. They’d love to see you. Scared or not. Honestly, it might even help.”

Hazel eyes narrow. “How could it help?”

“You know, Grace—she’s at the age where, you’re not allowed to be afraid of the dark anymore. Not allowed to be afraid of the boogeyman. Sooner or later you think you can’t be afraid of anything. If she could see that, you know, that her badass uncle Steve—that he was letting himself be scared about the whole thing? Then she could let herself, too. I say she’s shaken, but the thing is—she’s pretending not to be. When she asked to stay home the other day she lied. Said it was cramps.”

Steve thinks this over for a good long moment. Then his face _crumples_. He hides behind a hand again, pressing fingers to his eyelids and sniffling, spastically.

It’s legitimately A Moment. And it occurs to Jerry that he needs to say something wonderful: kind and patient and understanding.

Instead he hears himself say:

“You know, your nose might run less if you actually let the tears out of your eyes.”

Then Steve laughs, and it hits Jerry how very unwonderful and kind of stupid that sounded. So, naturally, he goes on and makes it worse. “‘s connected,” he explains, waving vaguely at his own face. “Sinuses, I guess.”

“No, no, I’m aware that’s all connected,” Steve rasps, lowering his hands. “Is that really how it works, though?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

Steve laughs again, then takes a deep, slow breath. “Done enough of that the past few days,” he admits, shaking his head a little. “I gotta get it together, man.”

“You have a really strict definition of having it together. Y’know, teeth brushed, fly zipped, not actively screaming; that’s how I’d define it.”

And, in what has to be one of the cutest things Jerry has ever seen, Steve checks his fly. “We’re good,” he reports, solemnly.

“Attaboy. How you doin’?”

“I’m okay,” he says automatically. Then: “No, I’m not. You’re right; I gotta let myself feel it. Therapist says the same thing.”

(And holy _crap_ , Jerry files that away for later.)

“Just feels ridiculous,” Steve continues, “especially since he’s okay, y’know? And I can’t change that I feel ridiculous any more than I can change that I feel— upset.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

Steve smiles.

Then once again buries his face in his hands.

“Hey,” Jerry calls, quietly. “Can I hug you, please? Because I— I just really think you need one.”

Without lifting his head, Steve nods. Jerry stands, resettles himself at Steve’s side, and wraps both arms around him.

And Steve melts. Like, honest to god becomes a human puddle. Head lolling all over Jerry’s shoulder, breath seeping down Jerry’s neck, fingers fusing with the fabric of Jerry’s shirt. All hundred-whatever pounds of McGarrett just slumped, dead weight, against him.

And Jerry aches from head to toe with the need to _kiss_ him, even just on the cheek, but now is not the time (not that there ever will be a time) so instead he just lays a hand on Steve’s back and presses gently between his shoulder blades.

Steve shudders a little.

Neither of them react to it.

And god, if he could live in a moment forever, Jerry might choose this one; he hates it that Steve’s upset but absolutely loves that he’s being allowed to comfort him. And beyond that— just, wow. He could never get tired of the feeling of the man in his arms, warm and solid, smelling like sweat and saltwater and cheap soap (which is honestly the hottest thing that Jerry has ever smelled).

Steve sniffles a little. Shifts his head, tightens his arms, and Jerry just closes his eyes and tries his best to stop the flow of time.

A few minutes later but still way too soon, Steve peels away—mostly. He leaves a hand on Jerry’s arm, though, and for symmetry Jerry does the same, so that their forearms press and twist together.

“Listen.” Jerry squeezes gently. “Come to dinner tonight, okay? I’ll tell the kids you’ve been wanting to see them but you’re still healing up from the boat. That you’ll stay as long as you can. And if it gets to be too much, we’ll just say you’re feelin’ sick.”

Steve has one of those faces, Jerry marvels, that can show fifty things at once. In this instant he looks relieved and grateful and tired and still kind of scared but, maybe more than anything else, _fond_. Jerry’s insides wriggle.

“I gotta say, buddy,” Steve sighs. “When we first met, I—I don’t think I saw the day comin’ where you would be, like, my honest-to-god sanity. ‘course thinking now it makes perfect sense.”

“Oh yeah?”

“You don’t hide your crazy. You keep it all on the outside. That makes it less crazy, when it comes down to it.”

 _I must just hide my inside-crazy really well_ , Jerry doesn’t say; instead he hugs Steve again, just a quick one this time.

“Happy to be your sanity any time, commander,” he promises.

And thinks: _I’m happy to be your anything_.

But doesn’t say that, either.

**Author's Note:**

> Falling more in love with these two every day, and really hoping time permits me to do a longer story for them soon <3 hope you enjoy!


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